Thursday, July 22, 2010

Take, eat; this is my Scooby Snack, which is given for you

Just taking a little break from my, well, break to draw your attention to this:

St. Peter’s Anglican Church has long been known as an open and inclusive place.

So open, it seems, they won’t turn anyone away. Not even a dog.

That’s how a blessed canine ended up receiving communion from interim priest Rev. Marguerite Rea during a morning service the last Sunday in June.

According to those in attendance at the historical church at 188 Carlton St. in downtown Toronto, it was a spontaneous gesture, one intended to make both the dog and its owner – a first timer at the church — feel welcomed. But at least one parishioner saw the act as an affront to the rules and regulations of the Anglican Church. He filed a complaint with the reverend and with the Anglican Diocese of Toronto about the incident – and has since left the church.

Telling reporting as always ... You see, the thing about giving the body of Christ to a dog is not so much that it offends any particular 'rule' or 'regulation' of the Anglican Church, as that it rather conspicuously offends what Christians believe (have to believe, if they are Christians) is the person of God himself. I won't bother explaining why this is so, as there is only one type who would feign ignorance of so obvious a fact, and they are precisely the people who would also defend the right of Muslims to keep dogs out of their buses and taxi cabs.

This line from the piece is of consequence though:

But congregants of the church say the act wasn’t meant to be controversial.

When the hell did people start believing that if a thing wasn't meant to be controversial, that it wasn't, then, controversial? She gave a dog communion!

"The levelling demands of a generous democratic inspiration have been changed from aspirations and ideals into appetites and unconscious assumptions."

- José Ortega Y Gasset

"Strange to think of you, strange now to hear your voices through the ether coming from a world so long since barred to us! I miss you, miss you even though you were opponents of mine and politically on the other side - oh, believe me, finally it is the lack of all opposition and any dissension whatsoever, and the deadly monotony that results that makes life here so unbearable."

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